


THE WEEKEND

by BasicBathsheba



Category: Carry On - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: Haunted House, Hijinx, M/M, Simon is very hungry, Simon vs. ghost, baz becomes a cult leader, baz dressed like the old man and the sea, baz tries to summon a demon, extra campy, extra sp00ky, homicidal boyfriends, it's funny guys I swear, like Watford: unsolved, nutella demons, scotland is extremely cold, survival weekend, theres only one bed, two boys being dicks then getting scared by spooky noises
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-21
Updated: 2018-04-23
Packaged: 2019-04-25 16:27:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14382504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BasicBathsheba/pseuds/BasicBathsheba
Summary: The Magical Adaptability Weekend is miserable. It’s freezing, there’s no food, and not enough beds. Simon’s unhappy enough about being stuck in the middle of nowhere with his homicidal roommate, but to make things worse, his classmates are being dicks, there may be a banshee on the prowl, and Baz is trying to summon a demon.





	1. THE SCREAMING

**SIMON**

This is a place of death. 

I heard Penny say that once when we were tracking a siren in Cornwall and we stumbled into a cave that was just full of skulls and bones. “This is a place of death, Simon,” she’d whispered, and she’d sounded so intense and serious and it had just perfectly captured everything horrific about that place.

It sums up this place pretty well too. 

We’re somewhere in Scotland—I don’t know where exactly, but we drove for hours and I was pretty sure I was going to vomit six times on the way here—and there’s absolutely nothing around this house for dozens of kilometres. If you walk outside, you just see mountains, and a small wooded area, and then some more mountains, and it would be pretty if it weren’t for the fact that it’s freezing, and there’s nothing here.

When Baz kills us all, our bodies are just going to sit here until the Mage returns at the end of the weekend to collect us. 

Penny says this whole thing is sexist, that it’s one more example of the Mage prioritising male students. She thinks his wilderness survival requirement is barbaric. She wouldn’t shut up before we left. “We’re never going to be in a situation where you need to hunt your own food and create your own warmth. Honestly, we live in England, not some dystopian novel.”

I guess she’s right. But it’s kind of hard to focus on magical gender bias when I’m 100 per cent positive that Baz is going to slaughter me this weekend.

And also I think there are ghosts here.

**BAZ**

This place is freezing. 

I go to Watford to get an education, to become a better mage, to prepare for a professional life of magic. A life that does not involve freezing my ass off in a 200 year-old farmhouse while playing  _Lord of The Flies_ with my classmates. 

What even is the point of an outing like this? The Mage started this “Magickal Adaptability Weekend” a few years back, but as far as I know it’s always been an excuse for the eighth year boys to sit around, sneak booze, and be bored for three days. (I’m glad I wasn’t part of the inaugural weekend—apparently he dropped the boys off in the Forest of Dean one year in a blizzard.) (Parents got angry.) (So now we get a cottage.)

Also, it’s horrifically sexist.

My group for this is awful. Dev and Niall went last month, so neither of them are here this weekend, and it’s just me, Snow, and four other boys I don’t speak to often. (Aside from Will, who’s on the team with me.) (But he’s a bit of a twat.) And Snow is friends with all of them. Of course. 

He’s been jittery since we got here. He followed me from room to room as I lit fires in the fireplaces, and I keep seeing him lurking around corners. I think he expects that my weekend goals involve some kind of sacrificial murder rite and bathing in his blood. 

In reality, I just brought a few books.

“Where are you going?” Snow growls. He’s sitting at the table with Gareth and Rhys, pretending to play cards. (He’s had a full flush in his hand for three rounds now, and I can’t tell if he’s not paying attention or if he just doesn’t know how to play.) The second I stood up to put on my coat, his cards were abandoned.

“Out,” I snap. He pushes back from the table, and I’m hit with the horrifying realisation that he’s going to follow me all weekend. I was just going to go sit outside and read, but he’ll follow, and probably huff around, waiting for me to do something evil. It’s going to be like fifth year all over again.

“I don’t need the company,” I snarl, but he’s ignoring me, putting on his duffle coat and trailing me out the door. I don’t stop to get my book; I’d rather he think I’m plotting something. Also, the only time he seems capable of speech is when I’m trying to read, so I’d rather save myself that aggravation.

Despite the cold, I suppose it is rather pretty here, in a bleak sort of way. You can see for ages, and there’s a bit of a haze hanging in the valley below us. It’s calming, in a desolate kind of way, but the bleakness could be pleasing if you squint. There’s shouts coming from the woods nearby, but I ignore them—Will and Jeffrey went out to try hunting spells and see if they could catch dinner. I’m not optimistic.

I thought about offering to hunt, since I’m the only one with experience (not that they would know that), but I thought it would be funnier to watch them attempt it. And besides, I packed several bags of crisps and a jar of Nutella, so I at least won’t starve.

There’s a low stone wall in front of the house, and I lean against that to pull a cigarette from my pocket and light it with my hand. Snow is snuffling along behind me, but he stops when he sees the cigarette, its lit end glowing brightly in the growing dark.

“But…you’re flammable,” he says quietly. Confused. I ignore him, flick a bit of ash away, and turn up the collar on my coat. It’s fucking cold.

“It’s fucking cold,” he mutters, shoving his hands deeper into his jacket, and I bite down a smile at our parallel thoughts. His cheeks are bright red from the cold, like apples. “Hey, do you think they caught anything yet? I’m starved.”

I can hear Will yelling  ** _doe, a deer!_** over and over, so I’m thinking Snow might be out of luck.

“Not enjoying yourself?” I drawl. My plan for the weekend is to say as few words as possible and keep to myself, I’ve decided. It’s the only way to survive without Snow and his friends killing me.

“This place is a bit creepy, don’t you think?” he mutters, then stares suspiciously back at the house. It’s nice to see him side eyeing something other than me for once. “Everything is old and it looks like there’s ghosts.”

“Ghosts can only come through the Veil every twenty years,” I correct. (I can’t help it.) “Honestly, it’s wraiths you should look out for.”

“What’s a wraith?” he asks, his eyes wide. There’s a hint of panic in his voice. Is Snow scared of monsters? That’s impossible. He’s killed dozens.

“Worse than a ghost,” I respond.

“Will said that the group who came last month heard screams and banging all night,” Snow says. There’s definitely a tinge of fear in his voice, and he pauses to sniffle. His nose is so red he looks like Rudolph. “He and Jeffrey wouldn’t shut up about it. They thought it was cool. Said he hopes it happens with us too. How the hell is that cool? Why would anyone want that?”

He’s unusually talkative tonight, which usually means he’s restless or nervous. Confident Snow doesn’t talk. Honestly, Snow doesn’t talk in general. When he starts rambling, it’s a sign something is wrong.

I take another drag and watch as dusk begins to settle around the mountains. Snow snuffles again (it’s a revolting sound, but unbearably cute) and I can see his breath in the air. It’s intolerable, being around him like this, when every inch of him reminds me of how alive and precious and strong he is.

I should enjoy this weekend. Call a truce. Bask in his presence. But instead I have the makings of an idea.

I haven’t seriously tried to kill Snow since the fifth year—I don’t even get in fights with him anymore, honestly—but I won’t pretend that I don’t enjoy fucking with him a bit. Sometimes he makes it too easy.

**SIMON**

I guess I see the point in making us learn to provide for ourselves with magic, but I’m really hungry. Really, really hungry.

Will and Jeffrey didn’t manage to catch anything except a squirrel. I think it was half dead already, honestly, because it looks skinny and its fur is all patchy, and I don’t want it anywhere near my stomach. Just looking at it makes me a bit queasy.

“Just skin it, it’s not hard,” Rhys mutters to Gareth, but Gareth shakes his head. He doesn’t want to skin it anymore than I do. No one wants to touch it.

“I’m not eating that. Jeffrey grabbed it as a joke, but I’m not touching it. It’s probably full of maggots,” Will declares, shaking his head. I tamp down a growl. Will and Jeffrey are nice, but sometimes they can be a bit annoying. Why bother bringing back a squirrel that you know no one is going to eat, just for a laugh? What a waste of life.

“What are we going to eat then?” I ask. There’s empty looks all around the table, except for Baz, who’s sprawled sideways in a chair near the fire, one leg dangling over the arm, reading a book. The fire is flickering shadows on his severe jaw line, and he’s got his hair pulled up, and he looks properly terrifying. Somehow he manages to make reading look sinister.

“Did anyone bring food?” Rhys asks. I shake my head. I should have thought of that. 

“I only packed vodka,” Jeffrey answers glumly. Of course. Of course he only brought booze. We’re not even supposed to have alcohol. The Mage would kill us if he knew.

From the corner there’s a loud snap, and Baz stands up and puts his book aside.

“Gentleman, I may have a solution,” he says, then strides out of the room forcefully. How does he walk like that?

When he returns a moment later, he’s carrying a leather satchel, which he places on the table. He makes eye contact with everyone individually, and then his eyes fall on mine for an agonisingly long time. It’s like he’s challenging me, daring me to do something, but I don’t know what it is. Finally he upends the bag.

It’s a fucking treasure trove.

He has everything: bags and bags of Walkers Salt & Vinegar, a few packages of Hobnobs, Nutella, mint Aero bars, even a box of Earl Grey. Is this what he keeps under his bed? I knew about the Walkers (he hides the crumbs under my bed), but I had no idea he was keeping this kind of stash.

The other boys look at him like he’s a god. Honestly, I kind of am too. I’m so fucking hungry. He’s a genius, for bringing this. It would have never occurred to me. But I can’t believe he shared. Why did he share?

**BAZ**

I’ve read  _Lord of The Flies_. I know that the crucial first step of any survival situation is establishing a leader. Snow would be the obvious choice here: he’s known, he’s liked, and he’s the Chosen One. 

But being a leader is more than titles. People will follow the provider in the group. So I provided. 

(I’m not thrilled to have given up my food surplus so early, but I suppose it’s just one sacrifice in the greater war.)

“Ration it,” I say, grabbing a bag of Walkers and going back to my chair in the corner. Part of it is a power move—I’m removing myself from the group huddled at the table in order to set myself apart, but also my chair is next to the fire and it’s the only place in this godforsaken house I can feel even an iota of warmth. I’d kill for Snow’s natural body heat right now.

The boys set upon the pile of food like a pack of wild dogs. (I’ve only ever seen Snow treat food like that.) I know they won’t ration it, but it’s fine, I have more upstairs. Snow is the only one not eating though. He’s staring at a packet of Hobnobs suspiciously, like I’ve laced it with poison. 

“Jeffrey, throw me a Hobnob,” I call, and he obliges. I rip open the package, take one out, and throw it back to Jeffrey. I pop it in my mouth then quickly pull my book up to cover my cheeks in what I hope is a natural looking movement. I hate eating in front of people, but it would be weird if I just didn’t eat around anyone all weekend, so I’m going to have to get creative. Maybe if I let Snow see me eat now, he’ll be less suspicious later.

It appears to have worked, because he grabs my Hobnobs and sets upon them like he hasn’t eaten in ten years. 

“Someone make tea,” I instruct, partially because I want tea, but also because I want to see if the group will follow my directions. Sure as shit, Rhys wheels himself over to the stove, fills a kettle with water, and casts  _ **some like it hot!**_

“Will, I hear Niall told you about the screams they heard here last month?” I ask casually as Gareth passes me a mug of tea. I didn’t bring milk or sugar, so it’s just black. Revolting. “ ** _Sweet as can be!_** ” I whisper.

Snow looks up from his tea, his brows furrowed again, that penetrating stare fixed on me. It’s the look he gives me when he thinks I’m plotting something. I just smile back at him, as sweetly as I can manage. (It feels odd. I never smile like this.) His shoulders hunch in response. I’ve got him terrified.

“Crowley, he told me all about it. Horrifying, right?” Will mumbles around his food. “Do you think we’ll hear them this weekend? He said it was like a banshee was standing outside his window and sobbing all night.”

According to Dev, the sounds they heard were foxes. But he hadn’t told Niall that, and I don’t feel particularly inclined to tell Will either. Especially not when Snow’s eyes are getting wider by the second. He seriously can’t be scared. How is the  _Chosen One_  afraid of a haunted house?

I suppose I could never take him home, then.

“Nasty things, banshees,” I say, shaking my head. “We had a banshee at our hunting lodge a few years back. Wouldn’t leave my aunt alone.”

“What’s a banshee?” Snow asks, hesitantly. Gareth turns to him and shakes his head.

“Horrifying. You don’t want to meet one. They’re these demonic women who come in the night and they just scream and scream and if you look at one directly, you’ll drop dead,” he whispers. Jeffrey shakes his head. 

“What? No, they don’t scream, they cry. And if you hear one crying, it means you’re going to die. It doesn’t matter if you look at it directly,” Jeffrey says, taking another sip of tea. 

“Then why didn’t Baz’s aunt Fiona die?” Snow asks. I smile sharply. 

“You’re all wrong,” I say. I try to sound bored as I pick my book back up. “If you hear a banshee crying, it means someone you know is going to die. Might not be you. But if you hear a banshee  _screaming_ , it’s definitely going to be you.”

I watch out of the corner of my eye as Snow hunches his shoulders and juts his chin out. He looks ready for a fight, like a banshee is going to charge him at any second.

Honestly, banshees don’t kill you. At least, I don’t think they do. But Snow doesn’t need to know that.

“What….” he starts, then takes a deep breath. “What are wraiths?”

“Oh, wraiths are super common,” Will says. “They hang around old houses a bunch. They’re mostly harmless though, right? Hey, don’t you have a few at home, Baz?”

I nod, not looking up from my book. 

“They’re harmless if they like you. But yes, they’re common. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a few lurking around here somewhere. Seems like the kind of place.”

“How the fuck do you get a wraith to like you?” Snow demands, and I simply raise an eyebrow. I don’t really know, honestly. They leave me alone because I think they’re scared of me. But instead, I let the question hang between us and I stand up.

“Well gentlemen, I’m going to turn in. Don’t eat all the crisps,” I say. I stretch lightly, and I can see all eyes on me. Then I leave.

By tomorrow, I’ll be the undisputed leader of this little pack. 

If I set my mind to it, I could probably be a successful cult leader.

**SIMON**

I think Baz was right about the wraiths. I think they’re hanging out in the sitting room, underneath the sofa I’m trying to sleep on.

Because this house is old as shit, there’s only three bedrooms, which I guess explains why the Mage breaks us up into groups to do this. Which is fine, whatever. But there’s only one room with two beds, and it’s on the bottom floor, which means Rhys and Gareth immediately got dibs, because Rhys can’t go upstairs. Will and Jeffrey took one of the rooms with one bed, because they’re roommates and friends, and don’t care. Which is fine. 

But Baz took the other room. It was the first thing he did when we got here; he just went straight upstairs, put his bags on the bed and lit a fire. Dev and Niall must have warned him about the bed situation, because he’d already partially unpacked by the time I got around to going up there. Dick.

“Why do you get the bed?” I growled, annoyed. He paused, turned to me, looked at the bed, then looked back, like he was trying to silently communicate how absolutely stupid I am.

“We can share,” he drawled. Then one of his perfect fucking eyebrows went up, which always means trouble. “Don’t you want to cuddle, Snow?”

So I’m sleeping on the sofa. Or at least trying.

It’s safer this way, I figured. With no anathema, there’s absolutely nothing to stop him from killing me in my sleep. I figure I might be safe around the other boys, but the two of us in one room all night, no prying eyes? Anything could happen. He could throw me out a window and blame it on the wraiths, or pull my eyes out and claim the banshee did it. So yeah. Sofa.

It’s absolutely insane to be scared right now. So what if the place is haunted? Nothing’s going to hurt me, I don’t think. I have a sword. I’ve fought a dragon. I sleep next to a vampire every night. I can handle this. 

But there’s been a creaking noise from the other room for the past hour, and I keep feeling like someone is breathing down my neck. Everytime I turn around to see who’s there, I’m just greeted by the gaping shadows of this house. There’s no electricity, so all of our light comes from the fires that Baz built. But my fire is going down, even though I’ve been poking it and trying to keep it going. Normally I’d just use a spell, but I’m jittery and tired, and I don’t trust myself to not set this place on fire.

This is miserable. I’m cold as fuck, I’m hungry as hell, I’m tired and uncomfortable and I’m  _bored_. Baz has been boring. I don’t think he’s even plotting, I literally think he’s just been trying to read since we got here, which somehow feels even more ominous than if he was plotting to kill me. And honestly, with all of this going on, wraiths and shit are just the last thing I want to deal with. 

Less than a minute after the fire goes out, I hear the first scream from outside.

Nope. No. Nope. Fuck this.

I grab my blanket and dash up the stairs and into the door on the right. Baz’s room. Let him try to kill me. I’ve got a sword, it will be more of a fair fight than trying to take on a banshee.

Baz is sitting up in bed, reading. Why is he awake? Is this a vampire thing? He’s got on a jumper and a wool hat, which is probably one of the weirdest things I’ve ever seen. He looks up, and shakes his head, his hat slipping a bit down his forehead. I hate how perceptive he is; I don’t even have to say anything, he already knows. He always knows what I’m thinking. I have no idea how he does it.

“No,” he says forcefully. I can see his breath. It’s  _that_  fucking cold. “Absolutely not.”

“You said we could share,” I say, closing the door and crossing the room to peer out of the window. I don’t see anything, but—Crowley, there is again. Another scream. I try to relax my heart rate. Stay cool, Simon.

“I was lying,” he snaps. “Go back to your sofa.”

“It’s cold and I think there are wraiths,” I mutter. Did I just see a flash of white outside? Fuck this. Fuck all of this. “Move over,” I grumble, heading to the bed. But he doesn’t move, he just shakes his head again. His knit hat has now slipped down past his eyebrows.

“No,” he repeats. “Sleep on the floor.”

“I’m not sleeping on the fucking floor, I’ll freeze to death,” I growl. I run my hands over my arms and try to create some warmth, but it’s useless. Everything here is cold and terrifying. “Look, truce, I won’t kill you, okay? Just move the fuck over.” My feet have actually become solid, frozen rocks. I can’t believe I’m actually doing this—sharing a bed with Baz—but somehow knowing that he doesn’t want to makes the whole thing seem a lot more acceptable and a lot less dangerous in my mind. 

“Sleep at the end,” he says, throwing a pillow to the end of the bed and scooting over all the way to the far edge. “I won’t have you mouth breathing on me all night.”

“I don’t want to sleep next to your weird feet,” I argue.

“Fine. Then sleep up here. I promise not to bite,” he says darkly. 

End of the bed it is, then.

I pull back the blankets and get in, positioning my head at the end of the bed, and try not to think about Baz’s feet somewhere next to me. I twine my feet in the blankets at the other end—I really should have brought extra socks—and I hear a grunt as my foot connects with what I thought was the wall,

“Did you just kick me in the fucking face?” he shouts. I freeze.

“Sorry,” I mumble. “By the way, I move in my sleep.”

“Trust me, I’m aware,” he says morosely. Resignedly. I can’t believe he gave in this easily. But fuck, I’m warmer already. And there are no weird noises in here, aside from the sound of Baz breathing and turning the pages of his book every so often. It’s actually kind of comforting. It feels like being back at Watford.

I guess vampires are less scary than banshees.


	2. THE SUMMONING

**BAZ**

The squirrels around here should be put down for their own good. Every single one is emaciated and mangy looking. I was going to catch a few to feed on, but they all look half dead. Not exactly appetising.

I found a few rabbits instead and drained those—they taste far better than rats—and then threw the other two over my shoulder to bring back for lunch. After Will and Jeffrey’s absolute failure yesterday, I volunteered to hunt. I was amazed that Snow didn’t follow me, but he’s sluggish today, and even more jumpy than usual.

I don’t think he slept much. I could feel him tossing and turning all night, and every time the foxes screamed he bolted awake and nearly kicked me in the face. 

He’s a distinctly awful person to share a bed with. But fuck, he’s warm. I was warmer than I’ve been since we got dropped in this hellscape of a place.

I used to think about it—a lot. What it would be like to share a bed with him. What it would be like to feel warm all night. What it would be like to wake up in the early morning sun with Simon Snow in my bed, a sleepy smile on his face as he said “ _good morning, darling_ ” and kissed my eyelids.

Instead, I woke up this morning to find one of Snow’s feet wedged beneath my back and his other leg wrapped around my knees, and he was snoring. His face was crushed into the pillow and his mouth open and small bits of drool were leaking out.

It was even better than “ _good morning, darling_.”

He woke up briefly when I climbed out of bed, and I could tell he was groggy because he flashed me a sleepy, devastating smile before falling back asleep. I wanted to crawl back into bed, to pull myself underneath the covers and warm my freezing hands on his back. I wanted to close my eyes and run my hands through his hair and put my head in the crook of his neck and just inhale, to finally find out what morning Simon smells like.

But instead I changed my trousers and went out to smoke.

The boys have officially accepted me as the leader of this little excursion. No one bothered me while I sat on the wall to smoke, but when I came in, Rhys handed me a mug of tea, and when Jeffrey asked what we were doing today, everyone looked at me.

“I’m not your mother,” I said cooly, then picked up my tea and book and left the room. 

I left the house when Snow finally woke up—he’s usually an early riser, it’s odd that he slept so late—and I didn’t tell anyone I went to hunt, so when I walk back in with two rabbits, their faces light up in delight. I’m just in time, too. Almost as soon as I appear with food, the sky opens up and we get deluged with a combination of freezing rain and snow. It’s revolting. And it’s even fucking colder now, which I didn’t even think was possible.

Gareth and Jeffrey muddle their way through preparing a decent enough lunch, but everyone is still a bit turned off by the idea of eating the rabbit, and so the rest of the Walkers get killed off instead. I haven’t told them about the second part of my food stash upstairs. 

We’re all sitting in the kitchen—it seems to be the default congregating room, probably because it has the largest fireplace—when I decide to put my plan in motion. 

“I think my uncle lives somewhere around here, last I heard,” I say casually, glancing out the window. The rain is turning into real snow now.

“You think?” Will echoes. “You don’t know where your uncle lives?”

Perfect. I love when people are predictable.

I want to smile, but instead I just nod and close my book softly, so it looks like I’m just barely interested in the conversation. 

“I haven’t seen him in some time. Not since he summoned the demon, that is.”

**SIMON**

Just when I think Baz’s family can’t get any weirder, he always manages to surprise me.

“Why would anyone summon a demon?” I practically shout. Baz glances over at me lazily from his perch in the chair by the fire. He’s still wearing his large jumper and knit cap, and he should look like some kind of old timey sailor, but somehow he looks so much cooler than the rest of us. Gareth’s hat has flaps and he looks like a toddler, and Jeffery and Will are wearing their duffle coats. I’m sitting here fucking freezing in my school jumper, because my coat got soaked when I went out in the rain. But somehow Baz looks good, even though he’s bundled up like a numpty. 

“Why wouldn’t you?” he answers condescendingly. “People do it all the time. It’s perfectly safe.”

“Safe?” Will asks. “How is conjuring a demon safe? And what’s the point?”

“The point is to get something out of it. And it’s safe as long as you know who you're conjuring, and how to control them,” Baz says dismissively. “It’s simple, really. Even Snow could probably do it.”

I bristle, but for once I don’t take the challenge. Baz and I are always competing and pushing each other, but I’m not about to summon a fucking demon just to show him up. Also, I wouldn’t know how.

“You’re full of shit,” Will says, shaking his head. “No one just casually summons up a demon. You don’t know what you’re talking about.” He’s laughing and smacks Jeffrey on the arm, but Jeffrey looks uncomfortable. Everyone looks uncomfortable. I’ve literally never heard someone speak to Baz like that (except for me), and I have no idea how he’s going to react. Is he going to kill him? Incinerate him with his eyes? Mock him to death? 

But Baz just looks…amused.

“Do you want me to prove it?”

Not even remotely. I start to shake my head, but Will is laughing. 

“Not even Baz Pitch would summon a demon. No one does that anymore.”

It’s weird, seeing someone else challenge him like this. I don’t like it.

“Will,” I start, but Baz shakes his head. He’s smiling, a wide, troublesome grin, and I feel my stomach sink. Baz can never back down from a challenge. Even if he was bluffing, he’s in deep now. He’s the type to do some kind of dark, fucked up satanic ritual just to prove he can. 

“I need to be drunk for this,” Jeffrey mutters, and Gareth nods. 

“No,” I say, standing up. “No demons, no vodka. That’s not what this weekend is for.”

“No one asked for a hall monitor, Snow,” Baz drawls. He’s not looking away from Will’s face. He’s refusing to back down. Fuck, this is going to turn into a bloodbath, and for once it won’t be my fault.

“What the fuck, Baz?” I sputter. “We’re not summoning a demon.”

“It’s fine, Simon,” he says, looking back at my face. His expression is unreadable. “You can sleep with me again tonight if you get too scared.”

He’s never called me Simon. Never. And what the fuck is he implying? The room grows heavy with the scent of my magic, and it’s got that awful tangy scent that it takes on when I get embarrassed or nervous. Right now I’m both.

“Summon a demon and get us dinner then,” Will says. “I’m not eating stringy rabbit again.”

Baz grins, and a chill runs down my spine. Nothing good happens when he smiles. 

Before I know it, the other boys have pulled back the rug in the sitting room in front of the hearth, and we’re gathered around it in a circle. I do not agree with this. Not even remotely. But I feel like, as the Mage’s Heir, I should be here. To make sure this doesn’t get out of hand. To stab the demon if shit gets bad.

Baz is crouched in the middle of the circle, using Nutella to draw symbols. He’s muttering and chanting as he does it, and I’ve got to be real, I think we all assumed he was fucking with us at first, but this looks pretty legit. He seems so focused, and tuned in, and…determined.

How the fuck does he know how to do this?

**BAZ**

I’ve got no idea how to do this. 

I’m making shit up as I go. I don’t know how to summon a demon, but I’m fairly sure that scrawling symbols in Nutella is not part of the ancient process. I’m just copying down things I saw in a horror movie once. I’ve littered the floor with random squiggles and sinister looking drawings that are entirely bullshit. (The symbol closest to Snow is a fucking Star of David.) But the other boys are looking properly nervous, so my plan is shaping up nicely.

The plan had been to see how far I could push Snow. If he’s scared of banshees, he’s probably scared of demons, I assume. But I didn’t expect Will to challenge me—that was a wildcard. So forget Snow. My new goal is to make Will piss his pants. If I freak Snow out in the process, that’s merely an added bonus.

I pull my wand and start waving it over the Nutella, which honestly looks a bit like shit in this light, and start mumbling things under my breath, quickly and quietly so that the boys won’t hear when I start casting real spells. For a moment I considered just saying random, threatening words in Latin, but I think Gareth and Rhys are actually rather good at languages and might understand. And also, words have power. I don’t want to accidentally cast something. So instead I say the words to an Egyptian lullaby, which seems to do the trick, because the second I start speaking in Egyptian they all look  _terrified_.

**SIMON**

Okay, yeah, he might actually know what he’s doing.

I didn’t expect this.

**BAZ**

“ ** _Listen to the wind blow,_** ” I whisper in between lullaby versus, and I’m rewarded immediately by the sound of the wind whipping up around the house. The slam of a shutter banging into the side of the cottage causes all the boys to turn and look, and I use the moment of distraction to throw fire into the dying hearth, causing a surge of flames.

“What the fuck,” Gareth whispers, and Jeffrey jumps. Snow’s eyes are wide as blue china saucers, and I just nod my head and keep chanting. Will is the only one who doesn’t look scared yet.

“Baz,” Snow says, but I ignore him and whisper another spell to cause the temperature in the room to drop. Another verse of lullaby, and then I have a breeze pull at Will’s scarf and play with Snow’s curls. 

“Baz,” he says again. He’s already pulled his sword, the numpty, and he’s settled himself into a fighting stance, shoulders hunched, chin forward. I keep chanting. Will looks considerably more alarmed, but I don’t think I’m there yet. 

“ ** _Wind cries: William,_** ” I whisper, then whip my voice louder, so loud that I’m practically shouting the words to the lullaby just as a sharp, ghostly whisper whistles through the room and we can all clearly hear the word “ _William_.”

**SIMON**

On second thought, this might be fake.

Everyone looks scared as shit, but I’m pretty sure I just heard Baz just whisper a spell in English. Which means he’s been fucking with us. I just can’t figure out what’s more likely: that Baz knows some ancient Egyptian demon summoning rite, or that Baz is muttering gibberish and drawing in Nutella just to piss Will off.

Crowley, he’s such a prick.

**BAZ**

“Fuck this,” Will says, going to get to this feet, but I whisper a “ ** _stand your ground_** ” so no one can leave.

“You can’t leave the circle once the rite begins,” I snap, then keep chanting. Will has finally realised that he’s stuck, because he’s pulling on his feet, desperately trying to move, and he’s growing more panicked by the moment. 

“Stop this, okay? You win, I believe you can do it, just—”

“Baz, stop it,” Snow barks, but I’m having too much fun, and I send another round of whispering wind through the room. 

**SIMON**

I don’t care whether it’s real or not, it’s gone too far. If this lasts one more minute, I’m pretty sure that a demon is going to appear and eat us all, or Will is going to piss his pants. And while I don’t like the guy, it’s not fun to sit here and watch someone get terrified.

Baz isn’t letting up though, and I can tell that even Gareth and Rhys are starting to get really freaked out. Baz looks out of control, stalking around the room like some dark sorcerer, and everytime the wind whispers Will’s name, he twitches. Fuck Baz. He’s proved his point. Why won’t he stop?

**BAZ**

“Seriously, stop this, I don’t want to—” Will says, and he sounds almost on the verge of tears, when a loud growl rips through the room.

“I said  ** _stop_**!” Snow shouts, and I feel myself thrown backwards by the force of his nonexistent spell. It’s not just me—all of us go flying backward around the circle, scattered around the room in a mess of limbs, except for Snow, who’s still standing, breathing heavily.

Will is the first to pull himself to his feet, and he reaches down to give Gareth and Jeffrey a hand. 

“Hey, are you okay?” Snow says, reaching out, but Will shoves him off. 

“Fuck you, Snow,” he spits. “And fuck you, Baz. You two are both fucking mental! Your posturing and dick measuring is going to kill us all one day,” he says, then practically runs from the room. The other boys follow, and Snow and I are left, alone, blinking into the now dark room. Snow looks confused, and a bit hurt, his hand still lingering empty in the air.

“Why is he pissed at me? I didn’t try to feed him to a demon,” he mutters, shoving his hands in his pockets. 

“I didn’t try to feed him to a demon either,” I snap. Now that the moment has ended, I’m actually feeling a little embarrassed by my theatrics. “And besides, he asked me to do it.”

Snow growls lightly, but nods.

“Yeah, he did, didn’t he?” I blink. I was not expecting him to agree with me. 

“He practically begged,” I answer, looking down at the floor. It’s covered in Nutella. There’s Nutella all over my trousers. I’m large enough to admit that this was maybe not one of my better ideas.

I spell the floor clean and sneak a glance at Snow out of the corner of my eye. He’s watching me, shivering. He’s just wearing his thin school sweater, the same one he’s been wearing since we got here. He at least had a jacket on earlier, but he soaked it when he went outside. Classic Snow: he didn’t prepare at all for the weather. He didn’t even sleep in socks last night.

“You weren’t…” Snow starts, then stops. “You weren’t actually summoning a demon, were you?”

I don’t say anything, just leave the room and head upstairs to get a new pair of trousers. Snow follows.

“It’s just that, I don’t think that’s how you summon them. You weren’t really doing it, right? You were just being a dick.”

I’m staggered by his observation. How in Merlin’s name is Snow the only one to tell that rite was bullshit?

“Is that your only jumper?” I ask him. He glances down at his chest and nods. 

“Yeah, Why?” 

I reach into my bag and pull out an extra sweater and toss it at him. He stares at the jumper for a moment, like a demon is going to spring out of it, then pulls his off and yanks mine over his head. I don’t know what moved me to this act of generosity—maybe it’s because Snow and I seem to be allied against Will’s idiocy—but I’m glad I did. His hair gets even more mussed in the process of pulling my jumper on, and it’s slightly too tight across his shoulders. He looks incredible.

“Seriously though…you weren’t actually going to summon a demon, right?”

I watch him for a moment.

“Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to,” I say. Then I grab my book and sit back on the bed. Crowley, it still smells like him.

This is my classic cue when we’re in our room in Watford. It’s my way of saying “conversation over, stop talking,” and it’s usually followed by him huffing out of the room and leaving me to read or do my homework in peace. I expect him to do the same now, but instead he surprises me. He stays. He sits on the window ledge, tucks his legs up on the sill, and looks out the window.

“I don’t think you were going to,” he says finally. 

I don’t answer. I just watch him watch the snow.

 

 


	3. THE WEEPING

**SIMON  
**

I know, logically, that it’s got to be an animal screaming right now. Gareth mentioned it to me this afternoon, when I asked if he had heard the noises last night. He said it was just foxes. That makes sense. Foxes seem like the kind of animal to be in the area, and of course they’d make noise while they hunt at night. 

He was a bit smug about it—which is weird, Gareth isn’t usually like that—so I guess he’s still pissed at me for earlier, which is absolutely mental. If Penny were here, she’d tell me that it’s valid for people to be upset when I hit them with my magic, and that I have to accomodate the fact that my magic can make people feel uncomfortable. But the whole thing only happened because I was trying to get Baz to stop, which was only necessary because Will had to challenge him. I mean, what did he expect? Baz never backs down from a challenge. Everyone knows that.

He should have known better. No one fucks with Baz.

But yeah, foxes. That’s the screaming. I can handle that. 

I can even handle the footsteps.

It’s got to be the foxes. I thought I heard them earlier, crunching around in the snow outside. So that would make sense. For the noises to be animals, like foxes, or squirrels, or something like that. But the footsteps don’t exactly sound like foxes. They kind of sound human.

There’s nothing outside, though. I looked, several times, out of the windows in the sitting room. I’d have a better vantage point if I just went upstairs, but I don’t want to go back into Baz’s room, especially after his crack earlier about me getting scared. I thought about trying to sleep in there again, but there isn’t any normal or non-embarrassing way to ask your enemy to share a bed with you. I got away with it last night because I was forceful and we were both aware that I was kind of scared of the sounds.

Honestly, sleeping down here in the sitting room is awful. The sofa is uncomfortable, and it’s freezing, even with the extra layer of Baz’s thick jumper. (I still don’t know why he leant it to me, but I’m past worrying about that right now. I’m just happy to be warm.) But I can’t go running up there again. Especially not after he was such a dick today. So I’ll just have to suck it up and deal with the footsteps. They’ve got to be harmless. And I can handle this.

The thing is, though, there’s nothing outside, so far as I can see. If a person were actually walking around out there—especially close enough for me to hear their footsteps—then I would definitely be able to see them. So, foxes make sense. I probably wouldn’t see them. I can handle foxes.

I can’t handle the knocking though.

It started quiet enough that I figured it was just the wind again. The knocks would come in pairs—at the back of the house, coming from the kitchen, on the other side of the fireplace. Then they’d go quiet. The first time I heard it I actually jumped, it caught me so off guard. Then it happened again, and I calmed down. If Penny were here, she’d tell me I was overreacting. She’d go walk around outside the house, check out every sound, and get to the bottom of it. And I thought about doing that, for about a minute.

But then someone knocked on the door. Loud, thumping knocks. And since I’ve been sitting on the sofa, staring out the window next to the door, I can say with absolute certainty that no one walked up the path.

So who the fuck is at the door?

I’m pretty sure it’s not a fox.

My sword is pulled, but I’m just standing in front of the sofa, my back rigid. I should get it. It could be the Mage. Or someone who needs help. I just need to walk over, and open the door. But Crowley, I don’t want to.

 _Knock_.

Please be a fox. Please be a fox. Or a goblin. Or a worseger. Or a chimera. I don’t even know what it could be that I’m scared of, I just know that I don’t want to see what’s behind that door.

_Knock knock._

“Snow?” 

I whirl so fast I almost fall down. Baz is standing at the bottom of the stairs, his eyes wide. It’s a new look on him. I brandish my sword at him, because I’m jumpy as fuck, and he takes a step back. He’s not scared, but he’s learned to give me a wide berth when I’m nervous like that. He learned that the hard way, with the chimera.

“Are you going to get the door?” he asks. His voice is low, but for once he’s not sneering. I think it was a genuine question. 

“Uh,” I say. “No.”

Baz raises an eyebrow. 

“Why not?”

_Knock knock knock._

“Uh,” I say again. There’s no good way to explain this. “I didn’t see anyone walk up the path.”

Baz pushes his eyebrows together, and I watch his eyes dart to the door and back to me. He’s got to think I’m an absolute coward. 

“Honestly, you’re the worst Chosen One,” he drawls. “It’s probably the wind. Just answer the door.”

“You answer it,” I snap back. I’m not getting near that door. What if it’s the demon?

“Why?”

“Because,” I say. “Because you’re a vampire.”

“You have a sword,” he sneers. That’s a fair point. But do swords work on demons?

_Knock knock knock._

“Merlin and Morgana, fine,” he snaps, and crosses the room in three long strides. He reaches the door just as the final knock reverberates through the room and he tears it open, revealing—

Absolutely fucking nothing. 

Baz steps out into the snow and turns around several times, and I can see light flakes landing on his dark hair. He walks to the end of the path and stops just before the gate and frowns down at the snow. 

“Nothing,” he announces. I’m standing in the doorway, and the light from the fire is spilling out into the night, illuminating him in a thin sliver. “There’s no footprints either. Like I said, it was just the wind.” 

He sounds haughty and smug as hell, though there’s no reason for him to be. All he’s done is prove my point: no one is here, so whatever is playing ding dong ditch with us is some kind of fucking monster. And he’s the one standing out in the snow looking like a particularly fit snack.

“Do you see any fox prints?” I ask. “I heard something walking around.”

He squints down at the snow and goes to say something, but then I see his face shift.

“Snow,” he says carefully. Slowly. “Get back inside.”

And then I hear it.

**BAZ**

Foxes scream. But they don’t cry.

It’s a snippet of sound, at first, and for a moment I think it’s Snow sputtering about his ghosts, but then I hear it again, more clearly, brought to me on the wind. Sobbing. My whole body tenses at the sound, because it’s entirely improbable and out of place. 

But it’s a woman crying, for sure.

I move back up the path as quickly as I can without running and dash back into the light of the house. Snow steps aside to let me in, and I slam the door closed. 

“What the fuck was that?” he yells the second I’m in. I ignore him, pushing past him to head upstairs, and he follows hot on my heels. I burst into my room and head directly to the window and pull aside the curtain so I can peer out. 

“Seriously Baz, what the fuck was that? If this is another of your fucking pranks—” Snow starts, but I turn and hiss at him. 

“Shut up,” I snap, and peer back out the window. There’s nothing moving, and I don’t hear the crying anymore. “It’s not me.”

“It’s just foxes, right?” he asks. He sounds nervous. 

“Have you ever heard a fox cry?” I ask. He doesn’t answer. There’s nothing at all moving outside the house, and the snow still looks fresh and untouched. Which is odd, considering I’ve been hearing the foxes walk around all night. Or at least, I had assumed that’s what I was hearing. Merlin and Morgana, what’s wrong with me? Everything I’ve said— banshees, demons, wraiths—has been a ploy to get under Snow’s skin. I don’t actually believe any of it. And I’m certainly not scared. Pitches don’t get scared.

“Do you think…” Snow starts, then swallows outrageously before he continues, “do you think you actually managed to summon a demon?”

I turn from the window to stare at him.

“I didn’t summon a demon,” I snap. Snow scuffs his foot at the floor and runs a hand through his hair.

“Yeah, but what if you cast something accidentally? You were chanting something fucked up and creepy, what if you—”

“I was reciting a lullaby. I made it all up. One of the symbols I drew was the Deathly Hallows,” I sneer, moving away from the window. “The worst I could have done is make you all fall asleep.”

“A lullaby? How do you know a lullaby?” he asks. 

“Believe it or not, I was once a child.”

Snow looks ready to argue, like he’s going to debate the idea that I ever could have been young, but the sound of knocking downstairs interrupts his thoughts and he jumps. Actually jumps. He’s as skittish as a cat. Honestly, I’m skittish as a cat. I’m not actually scared of monsters, but everything here is strange and foreign and Snow’s nervousness is starting to rub off on me.

“It’s just wind, or foxes, right? Definitely no demons?” Snow whispers. I nod.

“Absolutely. It’s just wind.”

There’s a silence, and all that can be heard is the popping of the fire next to us.

“But if it’s not…” he says slowly.

“We’re magicians. It will be fine. You have a sword,” I say, throwing as much blank disinterest into my words as possible. There’s another slamming sound against the side of the house, and I try not to jump.

“Right,” he says, staring down at his hand. He still has the sword out. He’s been swinging it absentmindedly since we got up here. “I have a sword.”

I sit down on the bed—because I’m exhausted, but also because this is a small room and there aren’t many places to stand to get out of the way of the sword—and sigh. 

“Look, I’ll say this once, and never again. I’m sorry for scaring you earlier. The demon was a joke. Everything is fine,” I say. It actually feels physically painful to apologise to Snow, but I feel like I should. He looks like he’s about to vomit from fear, and somehow that just isn’t fun to me anymore. Crowley, how I’ve changed.

I’m so disappointed in myself.

Snow doesn’t seem to know what to say, but he sheathes his sword and just stares at me for a moment. He’s biting on his bottom lip, and one hand comes up to scratch at the buzzed hair on the back of his head. I look away.

“Right,” he says finally. “Move over, I’m staying in here again.”

“What?” I yelp. I’ve wanted this. I wanted this desperately—so badly that I actually considered trying to cast a spell to freak him out enough to force him back up here—but now that I’m faced with it, I’m not sure I want it. It was torture getting out of bed this morning. I’m not sure I can put myself through this again.

“Yeah. Someone needs to make sure you don’t kill Will in his sleep,” Snow growls. “So, move over.” He reaches for the pillow next to me—the one he used last night—but I stop him.

“Snow, there’s nothing outside. You’re fine,” I say, but he ignores me and climbs onto the bed. Circe, bury me alive. 

“Look, it’s cold as fuck. That sofa is uncomfortable. We didn’t kill each other last night, so just, come off it.”

I grab the pillow away from him. I must look like a child, but he reacts like one and grabs for it wildly. I hold it out above his head.

“If you’re going to stay here, there have to be rules,” I say, because I’m a masochist and I have absolutely no self control. “First, we never, ever speak of this back at Watford.”

“Agreed,” he says, reaching for the pillow. I hold it higher. 

“Second, no snoring. You sound like a troll,” I say. Snow just frowns. 

“I don’t snore,” he pouts. Crowley, this is a bad idea. I just nod, and he frowns further. “Fine, then you can’t do those little sleep yip things.”

“ _Sleep yip things?_ ” I ask, amazed. I don’t yip. Snow nods.

“Yeah, you do them all the time, these weird little sighs and then you like, smack your lips and do this little high pitched yip.”

I start laughing. There’s no fucking way I sigh and smack my lips in my sleep. I’m a fucking vampire.

“How much time do you spend listening to me sleep, Snow?” I drawl, raising one eyebrow. He flushes a deep, deep red. Thank magic I drained so many rabbits this morning. He shakes himself out of it though, and makes a grab for the pillow again. 

“One more thing,” I say, lowering my voice and trying to sound as menacing as possible. “You kicked me in the face multiple times last night. So just sleep up here. But don’t touch me.”

Snow makes a face—he can’t raise both his eyebrows, so when he wants to look quizzical he just lifts his whole forehead and opens his mouth and his face turns into a mask of complete idiotic surprise—then growls, “fine,” and flops himself down in the bed.

I didn’t expect him to give in so easily.

“Bite me and I’ll fucking kill you,” he mutters, and I try not to smile. I pick my book back up—because I’m not about to just lie down—and sneak a glance at his hair. It’s puffed out on the pillow, and his back is to me, and he’s pulled the covers high up over his chin, his fist clenching them tightly. I’m going to have to fight him for them later, I can already tell. But I don’t care. He’s so  _warm_. I barely needed a blanket last night.

Going back to school is going to be miserable. Having him sleep in a different bed, less than an arm’s length away, is going to be miserable. 

Everything is going to be miserable. 

I’m not normally a “live in the moment” kind of person. I prefer to think ahead and spend my time dreading what comes next. Impulsive enjoyment is Snow’s forte. But maybe, just this once, I could learn something from him. So I put down my book, slide down beneath the covers, and just enjoy.

**SIMON**

I wake up facing Baz. 

The fire has gone out—I think the cold is what woke me—so I can only see him through the white glare coming off the snow and bouncing through the window. He looks peaceful in his sleep. More of a boy, less of a monster. He must be dreaming or something, because his eyelids are twitching rapidly, and he’s got his lips parted just a bit. Mouth breather. 

We’re extremely close. Far closer than we were when we fell asleep—or at least when I fell asleep, with our backs facing each other. Sometime during the night we both flipped, and now we’re lying on our sides, facing each other. One of my knees is tucked between his legs, and I’d normally be pretty embarrassed by that if it weren’t for the fact that one of his arms is flung over my hip. 

This happens, when you share a bed with people. Whenever Penny and I fall asleep, we always wake up completely on top of each other. It happened with Agatha too, that one time we fell asleep in front of the fire. Or rather, I guess it’s what happens when I sleep with people. I just kind of attach myself to them. (Penny and and Agatha hate it.) Maybe Baz does the same thing as me. 

I’m about to extract myself when he lets out a noise. It’s so fucking quiet I think I’m dreaming it at first, but then he does it again—smacks his lips gently, lets out a little sigh, followed by a tiny, high pitched breath. These noises used to piss me off. They’re quiet enough that they never wake me up, but I’d hear him, sometimes, when I couldn’t sleep, and it was like this aggressive reminder that he didn’t have anxieties and things that kept him up at night. That he felt comfortable enough in his vampireness to just sock the hell out at night without worrying that I was going to kill him. Honestly, I’ve always envied him his ability to just sleep. He sleeps through the night and he sleeps in, and I’ve never had that. I’m always up early after a fitful night’s sleep. 

He sighs again. Somehow tonight feels different. I don’t want to hit him when he makes that sleepy noise. I’ve never really noticed how drastically different he looks when he’s asleep. He looks calm. His guard is down in a way that it never is when he’s awake. 

Baz and I are polar opposites in everything, so maybe this is just another example. I’m anxious all night and turn off my brain during the day. Maybe he’s anxious all day and turns off his brain at night. 

Crowley, what a pair.

He sighs again and shifts, and I tense, thinking that maybe he’s waking up and going to catch us laying like this, and then he’ll freak out and  _actually_  summon a demon. (I know he said he was faking earlier, but I’m still pretty sure he does know how to do it.) But instead he just rolls over. His arm slips away from my hip, and he scoots himself back a bit so that his hair hits me in the face, and now we’re kind of….spooning. 

He’s freezing. I have most of the blankets, admittedly, and his skin is just radiating ice. Is this what he feels like all the time? No wonder he’s such a prick, if he’s always freezing. I move my leg down so I’m not kneeing him in the ass, and I pull some of the blankets away from me and go to tuck them back over him. I move slowly—I don’t want to wake him—and skate my hand over his chest to bring the blanket up.

But then I just sort of…leave it there.

I have no idea what I’m doing. But it kind of feels good, having him like this. Holding him? Is that what this is? And I think he likes it too, or he at least likes my warmth, because he sighs again and shifts closer to me, just as his arm comes up to latch over mine, and it’s caught there. And now we are spooning. There’s literally no other way to describe this. Our bodies are completely touching. This is weird, and I shouldn’t keep doing this, but honestly, it actually feels kind of nice. Cuddling is fucking great, and Penny is not into it. 

What was it he said on Friday? “ _Don’t you want to cuddle?_ ”

He’s going to set himself on fire when he finds out about this.


	4. THE RECKONING

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is the end! thanks to everyone for reading along. I hope you enjoyed!!

**BAZ**

Someone is crying. 

I jolt awake, my whole body tensing. There’s a weight on me, and I can hear the sobbing coming through the window, and everything is dark. Is the banshee on me? Is something on me? My fangs come out unbidden, and I turn, preparing to strike, only to see—

Snow. 

His arm is flung across me, and he’s pulling me into his chest, his head tucked into my neck. I can feel his lips on my bare skin, his hot breath tickling against my hair. 

This is fucking pornographic.

Another loud sob from outside pulls me back into my body. Something is right outside my window, and I can hear footsteps and then slamming, and more whispering. I sit up, and Snow’s arm falls away as he wakes up, his eyes blinking groggily as he squints up at me.

“Wha—” he starts to say, but I put my hand over his mouth and hold one finger to my lips. I point out the window just as the sobbing noise comes again, and I see Snow’s eyes go wide, and his too red lips fall open. Crowley, I need to get a hold of myself; we’re about to be attacked by a banshee, but all I can think about is his mouth on my neck.

I slip out of bed and pad to the window, and Snow follows. I can feel him standing on his toes to crane his neck over my shoulder to look out as well, and it’s making it hard to focus. I can feel his breath on me. 

There’s nothing outside though. But I can still hear the sobbing.

“You hear that, right?” he whispers, and I nod. At least I’m not alone. 

“I don’t think that’s a fox,” I respond. He squares his jaw and nods grimly. 

“Me neither.”

Before I can even blink, he’s pulled that ridiculous sword of his and is tugging on his boots. (You think he’d put on his shoes before pulling the sword, but somehow those things never occur to him.)

“Do you think you’re going to go outside and slay a banshee?” I ask him. He shrugs. He looks pissed. Honestly, I love him when he looks pissed. 

Aleister fucking Crowley, I need to get my shit together.

“I’m going to put an end to this,” he growls. “Something has been fucking with us all night.”

“Snow, it’s just noises. Even if it is a banshee, they don’t hurt you. Wraiths won’t either. It’s unsettling, but there’s not actually anything wrong.”

There’s more whispering from the hallway and downstairs, and then another slam, and Snow pulls at his hair. 

“I can’t think with all of this going on! It’s driving me fucking mental!” he shouts, grabbing a coat from a nearby chair (it’s mine) and dashing out into the hall. I follow. From outside I hear more slamming, and when we get to the sitting room we can hear clear, human footsteps even louder. Snow yanks open the front door and steps out into the night, his sword brandished, his magic starting to glow, and he looks fucking ferocious.

“Whatever the fuck is out there, just show yourself!” he shouts. “Let’s just get this over with!”

The night is silent, and for a moment I think we’re only going to hear the echoing of Snow’s challenge, but then there’s a rustling noise from the wooded copse next to the cottage, and then three men wearing track jackets appear.

“Oh,” Snow says. He lets the sword fall to his side limply and he turns back to look at me. He actually looks disappointed. “It’s just goblins. I thought it was going to be something more, you know, serious.”

 _Just_  goblins?

The chavy-looking creatures start to approach, and I hold out my wand. I’ve never actually seen a goblin up close, but I’ve heard they’re nasty little things. And stupid, as well. But what surprises me is how  _fit_  they are. They’ve got a sickly green tint, but they’re shockingly attractive for things that eat people. I guess it’s hypocritical to assume they’d be ugly; after all, I’m supposed to eat people, but I’m still staggeringly attractive. 

“Why are we being haunted by goblins?” I snap.

Snow still has his sword at his side—despite being terrified a few hours ago, he now seems entirely bored—and just shrugs at me. 

“Whoever kills me gets to be king, I think,” he says, gesturing lazily at the approaching goblins with his sword. He sounds dejected. “They don’t normally come in groups though. I guess they’re learning.”

I’m in love with a lunatic.

The first goblin lunges when it hits the gate, and Snow’s sword swings up faster than I can blink and catches it in the gut. Crimson blood spurts out into the snow and there’s steam as the warm liquid melts through the ice. The next one leaps at me and I sing a spell at it quickly and it goes flying backward just as Snow cuts down its partner. 

“Are they usually this easy to kill?” I ask. Snow pauses, as if he’s actually thinking it over, when a shout goes up from the woods, and five more goblins come rushing. 

“Shit, they really did learn,” Snow curses, and drops back into his fighting stance. There’s a yell from above me, and I look up to see Gareth hanging out of one of the upstairs windows. 

“Behind you!” he shouts, and I spin. More goblins are coming up from behind the house. Crowley. How badly did Snow piss these things off? I turn and Snow and I stand back-to-back, and I start throwing curses as fast as I can. I summon fire and shoot it off at two goblins to my left just as Snow kicks in the head of one approaching from the right. We circle, so he’s facing the house and I’m facing the woods, and I see him take two heads off in one clean sweep as I incinerate another. 

The boys are throwing curses from the upstairs windows, but they aren’t making much of an impact as goblin after goblin appears from the woods. Why are they all fucking wearing Adidas? Is it some kind of dark creature uniform requirement? This looks like a bad night at Wetherspoons.

We’re covered in blood and ash and smoke and I can feel Snow’s magic starting to rise, the air around us shimmering. If he goes off, he’ll take the whole fucking house with him, along with the other boys inside. I can hear him breathing heavily, and in the flickering light cast by several of my burning goblins, I can see that his pupils have massively dilated. Shit. He’s about to blow.

“Simon,” I say, reaching behind me and taking his hand. “Simon, breathe.”

**SIMON**

There’s blood and screams everywhere, the air smells like ash, and I’m blinking out.

It always feels like this, right before I go. My mind shuts off. My hands shake and then the air blurs and then I just…go. I black out. I wake up in a mess of rubble and death. I don’t like going off—it hurts, it’s not fun, and it’s always embarrassing and exhausting—but I don’t always have a choice. No. I  _never_  have a choice.

My body is starting to vibrate with untapped magic when I feel something cold press into my hand. 

“Simon.”

I blink.

“Simon, breathe.”

I do what I’m told. One small breath. Then another. I kick at a nearby goblin and swing my sword into its neck, but I can still feel the tug of a cool hand in mine. It’s grounding me.

“Just one at a time. Let it go,” the voice calls, and I close my eyes for a moment and feel myself shifted sideways. I let the magic go. I try to. I try to just breathe it out and let it flow back inside me, settle in my stomach the way it’s supposed to.

It’s working. Not entirely, but a bit, and when I open my eyes, Baz is standing in front of me, his legs spread in a fighting stance, blocking the goblins from getting to me. He’s singing spells so fast I can’t even hear what he’s saying, but goblins are going up in flames in front of us and another pair gets cut in half. Blood splatters across Baz’s face but he doesn’t blink, just keeps casting with one hand. His other hand is holding mine, but it’s not holding him back. He looks terrifying and fierce, and I haven’t seen him like this since the chimera. But then he was poking me, shouting at me, trying to get me to go off. Now he’s trying to calm me down, actively standing in front of me, trying to…protect me.

There’s only a handful of goblins left now, and I take off the head of the one closest to me and pull my sword through another two as Baz sets the last one on fire. It reeks. Everything reeks. But then it’s silent.

Baz is panting when he lets go of my hand and grabs me by the shoulders.

“Are you okay?” he demands forcefully. “Are you going to go off?”

I shake my head. I have no idea what’s happening, but I know that Baz just took on probably ten goblins singlehanded, and stopped in the middle of a fight to calm me down and protect me. 

He nods, pulls me in, kisses my forehead with a comically exaggerated  _smack_ , then pulls back.

“You decapitated at least fifteen goblins, you homicidal fuck,” he says. There’s a wild grin on his face, and he has blood streaked across his cheek. A bit of his hair is stuck to it. He looks away, scans the rest of the yard, then pushes me toward the door of the house. We scramble inside, still looking over our shoulders. The other boys are standing in the sitting room, their eyes wide as they take us in. We’re covered blood and guts, and we reek of burning flesh and hair. I know Baz looks like a demon, and I can’t imagine what I look like.

Probably dazed.

Baz  _kissed_  me.

But there’s still shit to kill. So I’ll think about that later.

“What about the sobbing?” I ask. “The banshee, I didn’t see her, did you?” 

Baz shakes his head and moves back to the window—we’re still in battle mode—but the other boys stand there awkwardly.

“Yeah there….there was no banshee,” Will says. “We uh…we were fucking with you.”

The room goes silent.

“What?” Baz says, spinning on his heel. Will glances sideways.

“The crying? And the whispering and slamming? That was us. We just wanted to try to scare you two a bit, you know—” but Will doesn’t get to tell us what we know, because Baz stalks across to him and grabs him by the collar.

“Hey, hey!” I shout, diving towards them. I grab Baz’s arm and try to lower it. “Just let it go. It doesn’t matter.” Baz isn’t looking at me, he’s still full of battle rage and he looks ready to murder Will, and even though I’ve seen a far more human side of Baz this weekend, I still think he has it in him to tear Will limb from limb. “Baz! Let him go. Just forget him.”

Baz’s eyes blink over to me for a second, and then I see his arm relax, and his fist slowly uncurls from Will’s jumper.

“We didn’t know about the goblins,” Gareth says. He’s standing in the corner near Rhys looking extremely uncomfortable. I can tell he feels guilty. “I heard the footsteps but I thought it was Will and Jeffrey doing another spell. It was just supposed to be a prank. You know, to get back at Baz. We were going to all laugh about it.”

“There are thirty goblin corpses burning on the lawn,” Baz says. His voice is deadpan. “Hysterical.”

“We didn’t know about the goblins. That was just a freak coincidence,” Jeffrey mutters. I sigh and sheath my sword.

“They follow me everywhere,” I tell Baz. “There was no way to know.”

Baz is silent for a few minutes and I can practically see him thinking, deciding whether he’s going to slaughter all of us, starting with Will. Finally his face relaxes. He looks tired as hell—shit, I feel tired as hell—and his hair is matted with blood. He does not look like his usual perfect self. 

“I’m going to get cleaned up,” he says finally. “If I hear one more noise tonight, I’m killing the person who made it.”

**BAZ**

I don’t think I’ll ever feel clean again. There’s goblin blood everywhere. And there’s not a shower here. 

I fill up the bath in the small upstairs bathroom with as much water as I can manage, then spell it warm and settle in. I feel like a bit of a toddler, trying to clean myself in a too small tub, and also every part of me not touching the water is fucking freezing, so I try to go as fast as possible, while also dragging this out as long as possible, because I know Snow is waiting in the room. I heard him follow me upstairs, and I can hear him shuffling around through the thin wall. 

When I get out, I’m going to have to talk to him. And I’m going to have to face the fact that I kissed him.

I mean. Sort of kissed him. I kissed his forehead. It was a heat of the moment, battle reaction type of thing, but I was just so sure he was going to go off, and I was running high from fighting, and he had been an absolute  _beast_ , and I just…reacted. 

It could have been some kind of bro-kiss, right? Is that a thing? Straight men do that, sometimes, in movies. I could probably convince Snow of that. That’s what I’ll do. I’ll convince Snow it was some kind of brothers-in-arms thing, and not because I was wildly relieved and also turned on.

Honestly, I haven’t felt like that since the chimera. And that’s the day I realised I was wildly in love with him. 

So, fuck.

Snow is already in the bed when I get back to the room, so I guess he’s decided that even without threat of ghosts or banshees, he’s bunking with me. It’s fine (I wouldn’t want it any other way) but what’s really upsetting me is that the floor around the bed is littered with his bloody shirt and trousers, and the jumper I leant him (a cream cashmere cable knit) is balled by the fire. (It will never be the same.)

Which means Snow is lying in the bed, practically starked. 

I did not sign up for this.

“You can stay here, but you’re not sleeping like that,” I snap. I have my back to him, I don’t even want to look, and I hear him shift to sit up. 

“Like what?”

“Are you wearing trousers?” I ask. There’s a pregnant silence.

“My only pair are covered in blood,” he says quietly.

“Then clean them. And get dressed,” I snap, throwing his clothes to him. This boy has spent seven years trying not to change around me, and then suddenly he decides he’s sleeping in his pants? What the fuck?

“I…” he starts, then sighs. “Fuck, I’m tapped. I couldn’t do a spell right now if I tried.”

“And how is that different from normal?” I sigh. He’s useless. I spell his clothes clean and toss them on the bed, and I wait until I hear rustling behind me indicating that he’s getting dressed to turn. 

“Why are you still sleeping in here? There’s no banshee,” I say, because I can’t accept anything good that’s given to me. Snow scowls.

“Why did you kiss me?”

I almost choke. Sometimes I forget how fucking direct he is. Why tiptoe around something awkward when you can just barrel right through it, Simon Snow style?

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I snap, pulling back the covers and getting in. Apparently my defensive manoeuver for the evening is to just…go to sleep.

“You called me Simon, and you kissed me.”

“You’ve lost it,” I say, turning to face the wall so my back is to him. “You’ve finally cracked.”

“Don’t do that!” he shouts. He’s standing at the foot of the bed and he starts pacing angrily, pulling at his hair and scowling at me. “Don’t…you…” he’s sputtering, and I almost pity him. “You calmed me down! You called me Simon and you kept me from going off. Why?”

“Because I didn’t feel like dying tonight,” I snarl. “I have bags under my eyes from not sleeping, and I intend to leave a beautiful corpse.”

“Rich, considering you already are one,” he mutters. I sit up.

“Did you just call me a beautiful corpse?”

“What? No.”

“Just some light vampire humour, then? ‘ _Haha Baz, thanks for saving me, did you know you’re dead? By the way, you’re also fit._ ’ Just a casual joke?” I snarl. His eyes go wide.

“I didn’t mean—I was just—you were—“ he stops, hangs his head, the wind gone from his sails. He sighs and looks up, his blue eyes drilling into me. “I don’t want to fight with you right now. You were brilliant out there. And, you know. Thanks for keeping me from going off.”

How fucking dare he manage to get words out right now. 

“I don’t care that you kissed me,” he continues. He stops, tugs on his hair, and then sits on the bed. “It was…nice.”

I don’t say anything. There’s nothing I could possibly say that would recenter whatever the fuck is currently happening and have it make sense in the world I live in. Snow is blushing —I can see it creeping up his cheeks, and he turns to me and says, “You were holding me while you slept. And I…liked it.”

My eyes have to be as wide as an ogre’s.

“And I…I liked fighting. With you. Together. Instead of against each other.”

Maybe I did summon a demon earlier, and it killed me, and this entire evening has been some twisted form of purgatory. Snow is moving closer to me on the bed. Why is he moving closer? What is he getting at? What is—

I should just turn off my brain.

**SIMON**

Penny once told me that I was the most stupidly successful person she’d ever met. 

“You just stumble into things and you try your best and you’re brave, and it works out! Things shouldn’t work out for you, but they do,” she’d said. She didn’t sound mean or jealous. She was just laying out the truth. 

I could use some stupid success right now. Because I’m about to do something absolutely mental. I’m about to do something that could end in my death.

But Baz’s hair is wet from the bath and hanging loose around his face and he  _kissed_  me. He started it. He laid down a challenge. And we never back down from challenges.

So I lean closer. Impossibly closer. 

“I liked fighting. With you. Together. Instead of against each other,” I say. His face is frozen in a mask of disinterest, but I can see how hard he’s clenching his jaw. If he was uncomfortable, he would have either punched me or mocked me by now.

“What I’m getting at is…I’d rather fight next to you. Than against you. Would you…” I pause. “Would you want that? Because I think….I think we would make a good team.”

Baz blinks. Once. Twice. 

“We’re enemies,” he says, dumbly. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard him sound stupid. I just shrug.

“We don’t have to be.”

“Why? Because we were stupid enough to fall for a prank and then killed some goblins together?”

He sounds nervous. I kind of like that. He never sounds nervous. I shrug and lean back on the bed, so I’m on my back facing up, and I smile at him. I’ve never done that before.

“Because you slept in my arms,” I say. 

Baz shifts uncomfortably and picks at his sleeve.

“Fitfully and unknowingly.”

“And you kissed me,” I add. He looks at the wall.

“That was in the heat of battle. Like a ‘we survived, good job mate’ kind of thing,” he says. I actually laugh—usually his lies are better than this.

“Are you seriously trying to pull a no homo?” I ask, then shake my head. I’m starting to panic, because honestly I thought this was going to go better, and I didn’t think he would fight me this much (which was a pretty stupid mistake, I realise now). “I told you I didn’t mind. I told you I liked it. And I….” Stupidly successful. I need to be stupidly successful. “I wouldn’t mind if you did it again.”

Baz looks at me like he’s about to eat me.

**BAZ**

I kissed him.

He said, “I wouldn’t mind if you did it again,” and I kissed him. I’ve never been that brave in my life. He was practically begging me to. So I did.

Crowley, I did. And he kissed me back.

Kissing Simon Snow is like fighting thirty goblins while standing back-to-back. It’s frenzied and scary and strangely elating, and you’re out of breath but it’s so good and it’s a battle. Neither of us sceding ground, and by the end you feel like you’re bloody and on fire.

“Where the fuck did that come from?” I ask as we break away. Snow had pulled away briefly to throw his crucifix across the room, but then we’d collided again, a mess of limbs and kisses and whispered laughs. 

“I told you. I like fighting alongside you,” he says. His hand slowly comes up to play with my hair. I’m definitely dead. I’ve absolutely left this earth.

“So you stalk me for years, accusing me of being a murderer, and then I finally get around to murdering things, and now you want to snog me and be homicidal boyfriends?” I snarl.

I expect Snow to stutter, to push me away, to choke on the word “boyfriend” but instead he just shrugs.

“Yeah, I guess. Let’s do that,” he says. We’re lying on our backs, and his hand reaches out in the dark and finds mine, and he squeezes. “If you’d want to.”

“Are you seriously asking me if I want to be your boyfriend? Less than six hours ago you threw me across the room for trying to summon a demon.”

“Well, Will made you. And you weren’t really going to summon it. But anyway, you’re the one who mentioned the boyfriend thing.”

“As a joke, Snow,” I say, incredulous. I can’t believe I’m lying here, in Scotland, in the midst of a snowstorm, with thirty burning goblins outside the window, in bed with Simon Snow, talking about being boyfriends. 

“Oh,” he says. He’s quiet. “I’d be fine with it. If you want to. I’d like that, I think. If you want it.” He goes quiet again, and I think he’s waiting for a response, but then he speaks again. “I like being close to you, I guess. And knowing what you’re doing. I liked having you sleep in my arms because it felt right to just….have you there.”

He has absolutely no idea what he’s doing to me right now. I roll to my side so I can get a better look at him. So I can determine if he’s lying, or trying some kind of plot to kill me. But that’s not Snow’s style. He doesn’t plot. He doesn’t lie.

“Do you want some Walkers?” I say, because I have to say something. His eyes light up and he nods. 

“I thought you were out,” he whispers, like we’re talking about something holy. I suppose we are, in a way. I sit up and lean over the bed to grab my satchel, and I almost jump when I feel the ghost of Snow’s fingers running across my back. When I sit back up, I upend the rest of my food storage and look as his face lights up.

“Can I have…anything?” he breathes, like a child, and I nod. He picks up an Aero bar and attacks it, before throwing me a lazy smile.

“Simon, I…” I pause. How does someone say this. “I do want this. You. The homicidal boyfriends thing.”

He smiles again, his cheeks stretching impossibly high, and I could kiss him. I should kiss him. I can do that now. 

But he beats me to it.

His mouth tastes like chocolate and smoke.


End file.
